Swansea Town Hall Committee makes plans to interview architects

SWANSEA — The Town Hall Committee agreed recently to re-contact and hold interviews with six architectural designers that issued qualification applications about a year ago.

Officials obtained an opinion from Town Attorney Arthur Frank that as long as the scope of services remained the same as submitted by the previous applicants they could hold those interviews with them after the lengthy delay.

According to Daniel Pallotta, the committee’s owner project manager from P3 in Norwell, the six interviews have been set for the week of Aug. 8. The committee will interview three architects on Aug. 8 and three on Aug. 10, Pallotta said Friday.

“Then the committee will decide who it wants to move forward with and we’ll take it from there,” Pallotta said.

The committee met briefly on July 19 with that issue being decided, said Pallotta and Paul Burke, committee vice chairman.

Burke said after the meeting of less than an hour the committee is ready to move ahead. It had not met since July 27, 2016, with other major town projects needing attention.

The chairman, Tim Reynolds, did not respond to several messages for comment.

According to the minutes of the meeting last July, the committee eliminated several possible locations for an expanded Town Hall.

Retained were the Town Hall annex property, and two others near the current location on Main Street, at Village Park and Ledge Road, the minutes said.

Pallotta is also the owner project manager for the library expansion project that was designed to incorporate renovation of Town Hall.

He responded to the status of the library project after the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners voted to appropriate funding for nine of 33 library projects whose submissions they accepted.

The total grant funding available at this time is for $67 million for those nine projects. Their communities must act within the next six months on whether to appropriate the municipal shares of their project costs.

The other 24 communities were placed on a waiting list on which the amount of grant funding for their projects was listed.

The Swansea grant was for almost $6.9 million, but the town was listed 24th and last on the waiting list.

Pallotta, who is also the owner project manager for the library building committee, reacted positively despite that status. “The library received a grant,” he said. “They’ll be moving forward before you know it.”

He said the delay for awarding the funds also takes pressure off the Town Hall committee as it hires an architect and seeks the best property location and design.

Said Burke, “I think we’re just going to keep moving forward. I think everybody understands we need to have a new Town Hall.”

Built at the turn of the 20th century, the historic but cramped Town Hall contains just 4,000 square feet and town officials hope to build or renovate one that is at least three times that size.

Email Michael Holtzman at mholtzman@heraldnews.com or call him at 508-676-2573.